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Last October I hunted the early West River deer season in South Dakota and had a great time. The only thing that marred the experience was that on the last day of the hunt it rained heavily and my almost-new Irish Setter hunting boots with 600-gram Thinsulate and Gore-tex linings got soaked inside because I neglected to wear waterproof pants which allowed my long underwear and the insides of the boots to get very wet.

When I got home I made the mistake of setting the boots aside and promptly forgot about them until mid-November when I got them out for another hunting trip. To my dismay the boots had an overpowering smell of mildew. I didn’t have time to deal with the mildew before I left on another hunting trip so I just put up with the smell until hunting season was over.

After hunting season ended, I emailed W.L. Gore and asked them for recommendations on ways to get remove the mildew without damaging the gore-tex. Gore’s customer service department recommended soaking the boots in a solution of Lysol. I just couldn’t bring myself to do that so I spent a hour or so with Google, searching for other solutions.

Google turned up several recommendations for a product called Mirazyme. I ordered two bottles and gave it a try.

Here’s the process that I followed that eventually got rid of the smell of mildew.

1. I soaked the boots twice for 10 minutes in a Mirazyme solution consisting of about 1/2 oz of Mirazyme to 8 gallons of water. Each time I dried the boots over a heater vent. The first soaking rid the boots of about 50% of the mildew smell. The second soaking got rid of only a little more of the smell.

2. Next I followed the advice on the McNett web site for dealing with very stubborn odors. I soaked the boots twice for five minutes in a Mirazyme solution consisting of about 2 oz of Mirazyme to two gallons of water. Again, after each soaking I dried the boots over a heater vent. After the first soaking in the stronger solution the boots smelled much better. After the second soaking, most, but not all of the smell of mildew was gone.

Unfortunately, there was just enough smell of mildew left to still bother me.

3. Finally, I sprayed the inside of the boots until they were wet to the touch with Primos Hunting Calls Silver Scent Eliminator with Colloidal Silver (Model No. 58001). Then I set the boots outside in the sun to dry.

I’m pleased to report that the Silver Scent Eliminator removed the last vestige of the odor of mildew!

What is the tithe? Some Christians use the word tithe as if it means little more than a regular offering. Bono (lead singer for U2) used the word tithe in this fashion when he spoke at the 2006 National Prayer breakfast. Bono said, “I was amazed when I first got to America and I learned how much some church-goers tithe. Some tithe up to ten percent of the family budget.”

Strictly speaking, a tithe is always 10 percent. According to Easton’s Online Bible Dictionary a tithe was “a tenth of the produce of the earth consecrated and set apart for special purposes.”

Some Christians believe the Bible teaches that we (Christians) should give 10 percent of our income to the local church and they refer to this practice as tithing. Does the Bible teach that Christians should tithe? That’s one of the questions I’ll try to answer in the next few months.

I’m teaching an adult Sunday school class on growing in spiritual maturity. I was eager to teach the class for several reasons, not the least of which was because I hoped that by preparing to teach on spiritual maturity I myself would grow greatly. I’ve been a Christian for about 28 years and most of my Christian life has been spent as an spiritual baby, with some years spent in outright rebellion to God.

A few years ago, when I turned fifty, I realized it was long past time for me to change. Now I yearn to live the Christian life that Jesus calls us to live. It seems somewhat ironic to me that Watchman Nee refers to the life I want to live as “the normal Christian life.”

On page 56 of Watchman’s book The Normal Christian Life he said “Our first step is to seek from God a knowledge that comes by revelation–a revelation, that is to say, not of ourselves but of the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross.”

This type of knowledge can only come by the work of the Holy Spirit. It is the type of knowledge that Paul is referring to in Ephesians 1:16-19.

Ephesians 1:16-19 (ESV) I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, 17that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, 18having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe,

Watchman Nee, A.W. Tozer, and Andrew Murray all write about this kind of knowledge in a way that makes me want to experience it, too. The question is, do I want it more than anything else in life?

Blues-tinged guitar rock is one of my favorite types of music (think Dire Straits, Eric Clapton, very early Fleetwood Mac). I’m always thrilled to hear talented musicians in this genre for the first time. Recently I discovered Chris Rea, a very talented guitarist, song writer and vocalist.

Chances are the only song by Chris that you are familiar with is his 1978 hit “Fool (If You Think It’s Over), but his album “The Road to Hell” is a modern masterpiece of great guitar playing, lyrics and vocals. Highly recommended. (His album Espresso Logic, while not as consistently good as “The Road to Hell,” is also worth listening to.)

I hadn’t intended to write about backup software today, but since it saved my bacon yesterday I have to recommend Cobian Backup software to you. Cobian Backup makes it very easy to schedule automatic backups of select folders on your computer. On my computer, Cobian backs up my most important files to external USB hard drive. Cobian Backup is free and it is easy to install and setup.

Thanks to Cobian Backup, after the primary hard drive in my PC crashed Tuesday night, I was able to restore copies of most of my important files from an external hard drive.

I say most of my important files because I had neglected to configure Cobian Backup to backup my Outlook email files. Due to that oversight I lost nine months of emails. Drat!

By the way, I have to warn you that inexpensive external hard drives fail way more frequently than they should. My first external hard drive went bad after 13 months of light use (one month past the warranty). Some of my friends and acquaintances have had similar problems. Now I only purchase (and recommend) external hard drives with five year warranties. My current external drive is a 500GB Seagate Free Agent. The Seagate drive costs about $20 more than the least expensive external hard drives of the same size, but, in my opinion, the five warranty justifies the additional expense.

With Barrack Obamas presidential inauguration just around the corner, it seemed appropriate to refer to my first blog entry as an inauguration.

This blog is more for me than for anyone else. If you are interested in Christ, computers, guns, music, science fiction, or interesting products you might get something out of it, too.

As an example of the kind of interesting products I’ll mention in this Blog, check out these cool insulated drinking glasses by Bodum. I’ve been searching for insulated ceramic or glass coffee mugs for several years with no success. I wanted ceramic or glass because I think coffee and tea taste better in glass or ceramic. I wanted insulated mugs because standard ceramic or glass loses heat too quickly. These glasses by Bodum work great, look good and feel like quality in the hand.

Jeff Cooper was the father of modern defensive firearms technique. He wrote several influential books on firearms and a collection of his essays was published under the title “To Ride, Shoot Straight and Speak the Truth.”